‘New Ukrainian govt undemocratic in the extreme to push for early EU association agreement’

Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk (2nd-R) meets with EU leaders during the signing of the political provisions of the Association Agreement with Ukraine at the EU headquarters in Brussels on March 21, 2014 on the second day of a two-day European Council summit.(AFP Photo / Olivier Hoslet) / AFP

It seems undemocratic in the extreme of the new Ukrainian government to be forging ahead with signing the association agreement with the EU ahead of elections, security analyst Charles Shoebridge told RT.

The Yatsenuk government should have waited for two months, to get
the ‘formal democratic mandate’ to do that, Shoebridge
believes.

On February 19, the Ukraine’s National Security and Defense
Council ordered the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry to introduce visa
requirements for Russian citizens. However, several hours later
the Ukraine's Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenuk said that government
wouldn't rush to introduce visas with Russia, given close
socio-economic and family links between the two nations. Such a
controversy in official statements on the same issue makes you
think that there is no consensus among the new authorities,
Shoebridge believes.

RT:What are actually the real intentions of
the new government in Kiev? And will the new leaders in Kiev be
able to overcome their divisions by the time of the elections in
May?

Charles Shoebridge: Yes, this visa situation is one of the latest of a number of
occasions where there seems to be [a number of] conflicting mixed
messages coming from within the Ukraine government. Of course,
one could say “Well, there is some confusion within the
government, it’s a new government after all; it needs some time
to settle in and get its policies sorted out and speaking in one
voice.”

But there could be another reason for this, which is that there
are struggles for power, if you like, within the Ukrainian
government itself. After all the Ukrainian government is
currently dominated by two political parties. Within these
parties different individuals have different views and different
agendas as well, so it may well be that the lack of communication
between different aspects or different parts of the Ukraine
government with some more willing to assert their desires and
their agenda than others. And certainly there seems to be lack of
consultation within the government, and this power struggle for
authority and positions within that government structure may well
accelerate.

What we are seeing is not these mixed messages becoming less over
time; they actually continue to happen suggesting that the
direction of the Ukrainian government is not towards settling
down and speaking with one unified voice. And we also need to
consider it in the context of the upcoming elections suggested to
be two months away, and they will be jostling for power and
influence. And the elections, even if they do go ahead smoothly,
may not return people to the same ratio of power that’s currently
within the Ukraine government, which of course is far from being
an inclusive government.

RT:Ukraine's interim prime minister has
also postponed the signing of the economic part of the
association agreement with the EU. But wasn't the EU deal the
main goal of the protests which led to the upheaval? How will
Maidan react to this further delay?

CS: Initially, the Maidan protests were sparked
by the decision not to sign the EU association agreement, but I
think they quickly moved into something much more important; they
turned to a desire to have less corruption and indeed one could
even say that the reaction against the political establishment
was reflected when Timoshenko came and spoke to Maidan, and there
was some disaffection in the crowd that the old guard were coming
back to dominate what some would see as their revolution.

But the numbers on the Maidan were very small; this was not the
Orange revolution of hundreds of thousands of people. We were
talking about 20-30 thousand people even at the maximum times and
this is the opposition's own figures. And of course many of those
have now gone home because they see that toppling the old
government that was their aim has been achieved.

One needs to look at where the power actually lies, and it seems
to be that in many cases the police and the established
functioning organs of states are actually not functioning, and
the power of the street still seems to be largely in the hands of
certain activists more on the far-right, those who have been more
organized on military lines. Svoboda is powerful within the
government in terms of the number of positions it holds.
Consequently, the demonstrators on the street are perhaps not as
important as they once were. It’s also certainly the case that if
the election is due to be held in two months and the old
government was toppled supposedly on the trigger of the EU
association agreement, then it would be seen by many, I think
quite rightly, to be undemocratic in the extreme to be forging
ahead with such a controversial measure without any formal
democratic mandate. Just by delaying by two months the signing of
this agreement, it could potentially be done for the people of
Ukraine to speak in a fair and free election with a democratic
mandate.

RT:Arseny Yatsenuk is now condemning the
referendum in Crimea. However, back in 2007, as Ukraine's foreign
minister at the time, he was supporting Kosovo's independence.
Why is that?

CS: I think it’s well-established that
politicians generally, of course there are exceptions, use
principles on a piecemeal basis. We’ve heard many Western
politicians condemning the taking over or the referendum itself
in Crimea. The referendum has really just proved what people knew
would happen anyway. I think even in the West there was an
acceptance among political leaders that even if the election had
been completely free and fair, the vast majority of people [in
Crimea] would have voted to go back to Russia.

And yet that has been condemned in the West because it puts the
Western leaders in a difficult situation where they are actually
condemning the principle of self-determination. The thing that
according to Western arguments makes this referendum illegal is
that the Ukrainian government won’t allow it to happen. But even
if secession or independence wasn’t legal because it wasn’t
approved by the Ukrainian government, this doesn’t mean you can’t
hold a referendum. Of course, it’s enacting on a referendum that
may well be illegal.

In Kosovo, of course, the Western leaders would say it was a
different situation because there was a humanitarian
intervention, and then the referendum took place. But the
independence took place some years later, so there was no
overriding humanitarian reason at that time. So you will get the
situation that even can apply in a broader sense to situations
such as Iraq and even perhaps Afghanistan to some degree. But the
West sees fit to intervene in the independence of other nations
to violate sovereignty, and indeed in this case of Kosovo to
create a new state without the consent of the parent state. But
they will try to find differences in this case.

Notwithstanding all of that, I think there is an acceptance among
the West’s leaders that Crimea is a special case, that they will
make much noise right now about the situation, but they
understand without any shadow of a doubt that this is a fait
accompli and that Crimea is now a part of the Russian Federation.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.